


I Can't Take Care of You

by i_luv_obiwan91



Series: James and His Lark [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Night Terrors, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Staying up at night, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 12:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3810001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_luv_obiwan91/pseuds/i_luv_obiwan91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I can’t take care of you like this, Lark.” He groaned in weakness, hopeless of any respite from night terrors and dreaded memory.<br/>“Yes, you can.” She answered him quickly, no doubt or wavering in her tone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can't Take Care of You

James looked down at her, aghast at the reflection he made in her glistening eyes. Lark was between his knees where he sat on her sofa; taking his right hand and stroking it against her face as she spoke softly, continually saying words he didn’t at first comprehend. “ _You are James Buchanan Barnes, and I’m Lark Elizabeth Townsend, and you love me… Steve is your best friend, and he’s alive, and_ you’re _alive… he calls you Bucky… I love you, James, please come back… please wake up…_ ” There were tears leaking at the corners of those bright blue eyes, and James’ thumb moved instinctively to catch them.

“You love me…” Voice not quite familiar, he repeated what she encouraged him to remember. Lark was quick to nod and draw nearer to him, touching her right hand to the stubble on his cheek. Recognition changed how his gaze focused on her face. “ _Lark_.”

“I’m here, baby. I’m right here.” She was distressed; her expression full of empathy and concern, but her voice was calm and gentle.

When he moved his fingers against her again James registered actual warmth, and he fastened his grasp on the back of her head like a desperate man. She came willingly when he gathered her quickly against him, pressing tight to her body heat and holding fast with arms now released from the numbness he’d slipped into. “ _I felt the ice again_ …” Bucky rasped into her hair and Lark’s hands began to rub his back and neck, reminding him that his blood was flowing, that there was life in him. The next words broke his voice, and took a moment of measured breath before they could even come out. “I felt like they’d just wiped me again. I didn’t know _you_. I didn’t know anybody.”

He could feel her head shake a little against his neck, returning his embrace solidly for a long time before small, lingering kisses were pressed up his shoulder and to his ear. “ _They can’t control you anymore, James. They can’t steal anything else._ ” She whispered against his cheek, moving her head to kiss his eyes and then tilt his face up to meet in a very slow, tender kiss.

The truth and intimacy of each of her touches forced a tremor through him, as though coming inside from a freezing wind to a wholesome fire. Bucky felt frail, brittle, and unworthy of the creature he continued to grasp tightly. “I can’t take care of you like this, Lark.” He groaned in weakness, hopeless of any respite from night terrors and dreaded memory.

“Yes, you can.” She answered him quickly, no doubt or wavering in her tone. “You’re the strongest man I know, and I love you, James. _I love you_.” It was always these words that eventually calmed him; that he could never deny as he denied there being any good left in him, because James would look in her face and see the truth laid bare for all to see. “Right now it’s just my turn to take care of you, baby.”

Muffled, James’ voice tickled her neck and Lark’s tears burned her eyes. “You’ve taken care of me since the day we met.”

She sniffed. “Not true. You escorted me to the bedroom and then left me there like a true gentleman when I got tipsy that first night.” He grunted as though to say ‘that doesn’t count,’ but she hushed him and went on. “And you brought Dakota in from the storm that same night in the garage. _And_ you gave me a blanket when we went back inside.” Lark pressed closer to him, softening her voice fondly. “I still love when you touch my hair like you did then…” She sighed. “You take care of my needs and my wants, James. You always have, honey, I’m only reciprocating.” The kiss she pressed to his head was not unlike a mother comforting her child.

 

Bucky didn’t sleep again that night, but he held onto Lark as _she_ did, watching her attentively and praying to a God he’d just begun to believe in again that he could protect her from himself. The terrors were frequent, even more than what he communicated to her, but at least James hadn’t reverted back into the Soldier for several weeks. Immediately after completing his mission with Steve, James stayed back in town so that he could visit Lark, letting his partner return to the cabin on his own for some R &R. Separated for a little over a month, she had welcomed him home like a lover gone for a year, embracing, crying, and laughing softly before his beautiful woman insisted he sleep on the couch and stay longer than the weekend.

The first night he didn’t sleep. By the next, however, his body and mind were too far fatigued to refuse Lark’s loving insistence that he rest, and dreadful sleep came at last. The Soldier woke Lark with a metal fist around her throat and his flesh hand stifling her mouth. James remembered now the initial panic on her face, how her pulse thrummed frantically under his palm, but then Lark forced herself to be calm and slowly put her hand on his face. Her eyes had pleaded, tears leaking down her temples, and the touch so loving on his cheek brought the Man back into consciousness, forcing the Soldier back into the miserable crevices of his mind.

He could have killed her, and James felt his stomach turn to think of it again. And he thought of it often. The worry was clear in Lark’s face when he didn’t eat all of his food, when his eyes glazed after watching her do chores, when memories of violence overlapped with images of touching her.

Lark shifted a little closer to him in her sleep, laying a hand over his heart as they faced each other lying on the couch. Reverently, James ran his right hand slowly up her arm and stroked her curls just as he had in the garage watching the storm all those months ago. She smelled like the bread they’d baked earlier, but her fingers were still fragrant from an orange she peeled after dinner. Bucky wanted to take in every sense of this woman, to have her belong to him. He didn’t deserve any of it.

As though alert to every self-depreciating thought, his Lark slowly opened her eyes and focused on him in the darkness, realizing quickly enough that he was keeping himself awake to give her a chance to sleep. Sighing, Lark reached up to smooth her fingers over his brows, gently thumbing over his eyes and resting at his jaw. “I love you.” She told him quietly.

Bucky’s arms pulled her tight against him and allowed his lips to claim Lark’s with a desire built up throughout his all his ruminating. Every reason and well thought out explanation to leave her—to let Lark live a peaceful, safe life _without_ him—were now disarmed and efficiently crippled from ever possibly becoming words. She would be safer, there would be fewer worries, unknowns, and eggshells of memories to be shattered further… but he would be lost. James would forever be grateful to Steve for bringing him back, taking him out of a toxic, brainwashed life of hell, and for continuing to be his best friend, but Steve couldn’t be everything. With Steve to break down the barriers Hydra had built and fortified in Bucky’s mind, Lark was the one who built him up again to be the man he wanted to be.

And he loved her. “ _I love you, Lark_.”


End file.
